Bret Victor has ideas. https://youtu.be/8pTEmbeENF4 https://youtu.be/8pTEmbeENF4 There is a fundamental tension between “what computers understand how to do”

Bret Victor has ideas. https://youtu.be/8pTEmbeENF4 https://youtu.be/8pTEmbeENF4 There is a fundamental tension between “what computers understand how to do” and “the problems that humans are trying to solve with computers.” Every programming language lies somewhere between one of these two fixed points. The goal of many if not most programmers is to end up with a system that lets you express all of your domain-specific problems as clearly as possible, abstracting away the fiddly bits that you don’t care about. There’s a lot of stuff that has to exist in order to get to that level, and we neither agree about it nor know all of what it entails for any specific thing. So Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) are often the best that we can do, and they vary wildly in quality. Some DSLs lend themselves to being visually programmed. They tend to be rare and niche, and incredibly helpful to the people who can use them. Perhaps more is possible, but it requires a foundation to build upon that does not yet universally or even commonly exist, and may never exist.